Jun 27 2024
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Diamond Life
Sade
Unoffensive and well executed but does not sound groundbreaking today
3
Jul 02 2024
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Out Of The Blue
Electric Light Orchestra
Great prog pop. As usual, a double album could probably be an even better single album but there is something about it being too long that is appropriate to the genre.
Several tracks such as "Stepping Out" would be at home on an alternate universe Let It Be album - down to the overblown arrangement.
4
Jul 03 2024
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Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Neither this style of music in general nor this specific album's abusive and violent themes entertain me.
1
Jul 04 2024
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Felt Mountain
Goldfrapp
Felt like a creative debut album with lots of ideas and potential and but not lots of focus and polish. I'd like to hear more "Utopia" and less "Oompah Radar". 2.5/5
2
Jul 08 2024
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Zombie
Fela Kuti
This album left me wanting more.
I loved the rhythms, the brass/sax and the rhythms - since there were often more than one at a time.
4
Jul 10 2024
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I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Sinead O'Connor
5 stars - one for each of the stages of grief.
A crisp voice that prays, placates, laments and rages, paired with pitch-perfect arrangements that never overpower the lyrics.
Such a strong debut album with one of the most incomparable covers of all time. (See what I did there.)
Hidden gem: Black Boys on Mopeds. The lyric "Remember what I told you. If they hated me they will hate you" would turn out to be all too prophetic.
5
Jul 11 2024
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World Clique
Deee-Lite
Slightly funky house music.
The one standout track is groovy but doesn't make the heart of an epic album.
2
Jul 12 2024
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Rapture
Anita Baker
Polished sultry ballads, perfect for a 1980s movie soundtrack, without falling into the sax solo stereotype.
3
Jul 15 2024
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At San Quentin
Johnny Cash
I wondered why we were recommended this album and not the original groundbreaking Folsome Prison album.
But this way on the extended album we get more of Cash's hits catalogue, more of his musical collaborators chiefly June Carter and more a celebratory mood.
I love how the crowd is like another character in the audio landscape in a way a concert hall crowd is not on a generic live album.
5
Jul 17 2024
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...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
The Dandy Warhols
Meh
2
Jul 18 2024
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Next
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
What a high-energy opening banger, and I can hear the theatricality dripping through and rest of this heavy rock / psychedelic / classic rock'n'roll fusion. I enjoyed the album and can only imagine how fun a live concert would have been.
4
Jul 24 2024
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New Wave
The Auteurs
The impact of a great debut album can spawn a whole original genre.
The introduction of lesser first albums lay no claim to even a stylistic revival.
New "New Wave" waves, waives new new wave wave.
2
Jul 25 2024
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Tank Battles
Dagmar Krause
There are any number of musical cast recordings to which I would rather be listening, The Threepenny Opera for example.
One seedy jazz hand.
1
Aug 12 2024
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Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
PJ Harvey
Everything you could want from an indie rock album to end the 90s.
PJ Harvey transforms teenage angst into mature anguish.
Still grungy, but now all the more beautiful for it.
Four hustlers before they started side hustling.
4
Aug 13 2024
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Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
OutKast
The funky edge of both albums is seductively infecious. The growing contrast of OutKast's two stars is evident.
Big Boi is motivated rap: contmeplating the ongoing cyles of violence after 911, asking the for meaning of life and praying for repentence.
Andre 3000 is party pop: contemplating his lady spreading, asking where her panties have gone and thanking the Lord that she "got that thang".
Three and a half shakes of a polaroid picture.
3
Aug 19 2024
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Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
His harmonica played the skeleton keys and his brand new leopard skin electric guitar solo jaded the folk scene. But it is the way this noble poet half-spoke his rhymes like a slow-motion rapper that "showed, corrode, flowed, the road, was owed" and "explodes" in our ears.
A great album that rewards repeated listening.
Four 'I-want-you's plus a 'so-bad-honey'. 4.5
4
Aug 20 2024
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The Genius Of Ray Charles
Ray Charles
He might be famous for influencing later piano men (Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Harry Connick Jr) but none of the instruments sound virtuosic here. It is Charles' soulful voice that surpasses the piano, big band, and string orchestra on this album and turns the blues a bright sunny yellow.
Three-and-a-half octaves vocal range: 3.5
4
Aug 22 2024
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Live At The Star Club, Hamburg
Jerry Lee Lewis
Like a Rock'n'Roll missing link, Jerry Lee Lewis bridges the Boogie Woogie bass of a generation earlier to the aggressive energy of punk, which was still to come.
He is pilfering, pioneering and problematic all at once.
Four alive and kicking tracks - before I changed over to listen to Little Richard.
4
4